What a horse actually costs per year in Europe — the honest budget

Ask someone what their horse cost and they will tell you what they paid for it. Ask what the horse costs and the answer comes more slowly, because nobody adds it up. This piece adds it up.

The short version: a horse kept at a livery yard in Europe costs its owner somewhere between €4,000 and €12,000 a year in routine expenses, and the first year adds €1,500 to €4,000 on top. That is before anything goes wrong, and with a horse, over enough years, something goes wrong.

The ranges are wide because the costs are mostly local. Full livery near Munich or Utrecht runs three times the price of a field and a shelter outside Thessaloniki or Tirana, and so does the farrier. The shape of the budget is the same everywhere; the numbers scale with where you live.

The routine lines#

Keep: €1,200–€7,000. The biggest line by far, and the one with the widest range. It depends on how much of the daily work you do yourself.

• Grass livery (a field, a shelter, water, you do everything): €100–€250 a month.
• DIY livery (a stable and turnout, you muck out and feed): €150–€400.
• Part livery (the yard does mornings or evenings): €300–€600.
• Full livery (everything done, often including exercise): €500–€1,200, and higher at competition yards.

Keeping a horse at home is not free either: fencing, water, a shelter, muck disposal, and a second horse or a companion, because a horse alone is a horse with a behaviour problem.

Forage: €600–€1,800. A 500 kg horse eats around 10 kg of hay a day when grass is short, more in winter. At €150–€300 a tonne for hay in most of Europe, and double that in a drought year or where hay has to travel, winter forage alone is several hundred euros. Bedding, if the horse is stabled, adds €300–€900 a year. Both lines rose sharply after the dry summers of recent years and have not come back down.

Hard feed and supplements: €200–€800. Many horses in light work need nothing but forage, a mineral balancer and salt. Feed bills climb when somebody decides the horse needs "topping up" without asking whether it does; a good-doer on hard feed becomes an overweight horse, and an overweight horse is a laminitis risk.

Farrier: €500–€1,200. Every six to eight weeks, for the whole of the horse's life. Trimming a barefoot horse costs €30–€60 a visit; a full set of shoes €80–€160, more for remedial work. This is the most predictable cost in the budget and the one people most often try to stretch, which ends in lameness.

Dentist: €80–€200. A rasp once a year, sometimes twice, by an equine dental technician or the vet. A horse with sharp teeth wastes feed, drops weight and can colic on badly chewed forage.

Routine vet: €200–€500. Annual vaccinations against influenza and tetanus, which most yards and all competitions require, plus a health check and a worm-egg-count programme. Add rabies where it is required, and equine herpes if the horse travels or competes.

Insurance: €300–€1,500. Third-party liability is the one that matters most and costs least, and in several EU countries it is compulsory for horse owners. Vet-fee cover is priced on the horse's value and the limit per condition; look for a limit that covers colic surgery in your country, and read the exclusions before you need them.

Tack, rugs and kit: €300–€1,000. Saddle checks and reflocking, a rug that tears, a new set of boots, grooming kit, a headcollar that walks off at the show. The first year is much higher (see below); after that it settles into a steady drip.

Lessons, transport and competing: €0–€3,000+. Entirely optional and easily the largest discretionary line. A lesson a week is €1,500–€2,500 a year on its own; a lorry or trailer needs insurance, a towing vehicle and maintenance.

The first year#

• The horse: €1,500–€15,000. A sound, sane, ridden horse from a reputable seller in Europe sits somewhere in that range, and the cheap end is where the expensive problems are bought.
• Pre-purchase vetting: €250–€800. The best money in the entire budget. A five-stage vetting with X-rays finds the things the seller did not mention, and the report is what your insurer will ask for.
• Saddle: €800–€3,000 fitted, plus a bridle, rugs for the seasons, boots, headcollars, grooming kit, first-aid box. Budget €1,500–€3,500 for kit before a single ride.
• Transport home, passport transfer, registration with the national database (compulsory across the EU; each horse has a passport and a microchip), and any insurance excess: a few hundred.

The three bills that decide it#

Every experienced owner has a story, and it is one of these.

Colic surgery: €4,000–€10,000. Around one horse in ten colics in a year; most recover with a visit and drugs, but a proportion need surgery, and the decision has to be made in the middle of the night. We wrote a separate piece on colic: the signs and the first hour. This is the single strongest argument for vet-fee insurance.

Lameness that will not go away: €1,000–€5,000 a year. Nerve blocks, X-rays, an MRI at a referral centre, then months of controlled exercise and a horse you cannot ride but still have to keep, at full cost. Lameness is the commonest reason a horse's ridden career ends early, and the yard bill does not stop when the riding does.

Old age: as long as it lasts. Horses live into their late twenties and thirties. The last years bring Cushing's disease (a daily tablet, €50–€100 a month for life), failing teeth that mean soaked feed instead of hay, arthritis, and a horse that cannot be ridden or sold, only kept. A retired horse costs almost exactly what a working one does, for five or ten years. Anyone taking on a horse is taking on its retirement too, and the honest budget includes it.

Ways to spend less that do not cost more later#

• Share. A part-loan or share arrangement halves the bills and suits a horse that would otherwise stand in a field five days a week.
• DIY where you can. Mucking out is the difference between grass and full livery, and it is also how you spot the dropping count that heads off a colic.
• Feed forage, not fashion. Most horses need less bag feed than they get. A forage analysis and a balancer cost less than the supplements they replace.
• Buy hay early, in summer, in bulk, and store it dry.
• Never skip the farrier or the dentist to save money. Both are cheap next to what neglecting them causes.
• Insure young, before the first vet history, on a policy with a colic-surgery limit that fits your country's prices.
• Keep the records. The passport, the vaccination dates, the last worming, the farrier cycle, the weight: they are the paperwork every sale, competition, insurance claim and vet visit asks for. They live just as well on a phone as in the tack room; a horse's profile in mypet care holds the vaccination card, the visits and the weight chart, and it is with you at the yard.

The honest total#

Routine, at a livery yard: €4,000–€12,000 a year. First year: add €1,500–€4,000 plus the horse. Over a twenty-five-year life, with one or two of the big bills and a retirement at the end, a horse in Europe costs its owner well over €100,000. Nobody who has one regrets it, and nobody who has one thinks it was cheap.